Arts

If only all of us could see the world the way Paddington sees London. The furry little bear in a raincoat looks around his adopted home and finds, in the smiling faces of his neighbors, nothing but joyful spirits and good intentions. There are no "no-go zones"; even a prison full of roughnecks can be a chance to help people in need. Forget the fact that he's a talking bear from Darkest Peru. It's Paddington's impenetrable spirit, his striving to do right by the world, to "always see the good in people," even those who wish him harm, that is the biggest wish-fulfillment of 2018.

In 2017, Lena Waithe made history as the first black woman to win an Emmy for outstanding comedy writing. The award specifically recognized Master of None's "Thanksgiving" episode, which Waithe co-wrote with Aziz Ansari and based on her experience coming out to her mother.

There's no kind of anguished desperation that feels quite like the desire to communicate with loved ones who we've lost. It can turn even the most rational person into a believer in the supernatural — to the bereaved, even if there's just a small chance of connecting with a dead friend or family member, isn't it worth the three dollars for the first minute and 99 cents for each additional minute?

Nearly two weeks after Logan Paul posted a YouTube video depicting an apparent suicide victim — and just over a week after he removed it and apologized — the online video platform has announced it is scaling back its relationship with the vlogging star.

Some artists in New York may be wishing to get older faster. A gallery there caters to artists age 60 and older. No kids allowed.

Some 200 artists have exhibited at the Carter Burden Gallery since it opened nine years ago in Chelsea. Business is good, and works sell from $200 to $9,000. It's a lot like hundreds of other galleries in New York — except for one important thing: The Carter Burden has an age limit. Why?

Historian and author Randall Hansen is a lucky man: The title of one of his books is almost exactly the same as another that recently became very, very well-known.

Hansen's book is Fire And Fury: The Allied Bombing Of Germany 1942-1945. The beginning of that title "Fire and Fury" is the same as that of journalist and author Michael Wolff's new exposé about the Trump administration, Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House.

Ali Smith is flat-out brilliant, and she's on fire these days. Writing in the heat of outrage following England's divisive Brexit vote, she opened a seasonal quartet of novels last year with Autumn, a moving requiem for an unusual friendship between two unlikely kindred spirits, a young art historian and her singularly cultivated old neighbor, whose waning days coincide with an alarming erosion of civility and compassion in the not-so-United Kingdom. Deservedly, Autumn landed on the Booker Prize shortlist.

Lea Berman and Jeremy Bernard have organized state dinners and congressional picnics, each serving as White House social secretary for different administrations. Bernard worked for President Obama; Berman for President George W. Bush. And they've collaborated on a new book that uses their White House experiences to draw out lessons in how to handle crises, defuse awkward moments and manage expectations. It's called Treating People Well: The Extraordinary Power Of Civility At Work And In Life.

Dozens of powerful men, including two at NPR, have lost their jobs and reputations in the cultural reckoning that is the #MeToo movement. Clearly, there's tremendous momentum behind it, but where does it go from here? Do those men have a shot at redemption?

Denis Johnson's posthumous short story collection, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, is full of last calls to his readers signaling, "Hurry up please, it's time." Take these eerie sentences spoken by the narrator of a story called "Triumph Over the Grave":

It's plain to you that at the time I write this, I'm not dead. But maybe by the time you read it.

Patrice Banks is now a mechanic, and the owner of a successful auto clinic, but there was a time when she avoided taking her own car in for routine maintenance.

"I was afraid I was going to be taken advantage of," she says. "I was tired of feeling helpless and having to go talk to a guy."

Banks, who was working as an engineer at DuPont at the time, thought she'd feel more comfortable with a female technician. There was only one problem: "I couldn't find a female mechanic," she says, "so I had to learn it [myself]."

On New York's Lower East Side in 1969, a fortune teller has set up shop in a tenement on Hester Street. With long brown hair that "hangs in two slender braids," and lips that are "puckered like a drawstring purse," she attracts the young Gold children, who seek an audience with the crone as a respite from their summertime blues. These four — Simon, Klara, Daniel and Varya Gold — comprise the central quartet in The Immortalists, the second novel from Chloe Benjamin.

It's the second week of 2018, and if you are still resolved to improve your life in this new year, Jolenta Greenberg and Kristen Meinzer may be able to help. They host a podcast called By The Book, and for each episode, they choose one self-help book and live by its rules for a couple of weeks. So they're well-equipped to tell us which of these books has actually improved their lives — and which ones to avoid.

The reputation of the Golden Globes is that they're the Oscars' rowdier, tipsier, weirder cousin — sometimes refreshingly so. And while awards season is always the most intense time of year for celebrity fashion, this year the allegations — and, in some cases, admissions — of sexual harassment and assault added a far more serious layer of conversation. Some women said in advance that they would wear black to convey their support for people who have reported abuse.

Now to Hollywood, where the first major awards ceremony of the season, the Golden Globes, is being held tonight. For weeks now, it's been obvious that the evening will reckon some way or another with one of the major stories of the past year.

If you are a fan of a certain television drama that airs on Thursday nights on ABC, then Joe Morton needs no introduction.

On the show Scandal, he plays Rowan "Eli" Pope, the notorious, scheming father of main character Olivia Pope. His scene-stealing work in the role earned Morton an Emmy for Best Guest Actor in a Drama Series, as well as a whole new generation of fans.

There are times when we can connect — surprisingly deeply — with a stranger, and then never see them again. A missed connection. A while ago, we asked you to call in with your "missed connections" stories, and let us help you find that person.

Greta Pane called in about an encounter she had through the wall of a piano practice room almost 20 years ago.

Sometimes, while doing this job, I like to think about how books come to be — how the writers think, and what they're planning while sitting there in front of the blank page, the blinking cursor. It's that first moment of creation that I find most fascinating. The instant when an idea transforms into something ... more.

For Nick Harkaway, I have to imagine that the moment he sat down to write his new novel Gnomon went something like this:

The film Molly's Game (up for two Golden Globes on Sunday) is based on a memoir by Molly Bloom, an Olympic-level skier whose athletic career ended in a dramatic wipe-out. While looking for something to occupy her time before law school, Bloom stumbled onto the world of underground, high-stakes celebrity poker. Eventually, she found herself in the sights of U.S. prosecutors, who targeted her for her role in organizing illegal games.

Henry James, Mary Beard tells us in her new book Women & Power, liked to complain about women's voices — American ones in particular. Under their influence, he believed, language risked devolving into a "tongueless slobber or snarl or whine," like "the moo of the cow, the bray of the ass, and the bark of the dog."